Although we now have very nice js localization from Michael Adams in [4968], but there are some things that can be improved, more specifically:
- All the strings for translations have to be extracted from the js source, they have to be give names and have to stay in en external php file
- There is not support for plural forms
- The template strings are processed manually (message = obj.delText.replace(/%thing%/g, what);) (this one is not very big problem).
So, I thought, isn't there a way to incorporate gettext into javascript. And after that, I wrote some stupid js gettext implementation. Here is what it looks like:
- A js file can be xgettext-ed using the perl parser, they look almost the same, regarding the strings: xgettext -L perl <js files>
- The translations are taken from a jsvascript dictionary, which must be given on object initialization. I wrote a simple function to generate this from a mo file. So we can take extract the strings from js files into a separate mo and give them to the jsgettext on load.
- There is a simple format function, which can make things like: gettext.format("Here are {count} of {type} dragons!", {count: 8, type: 'mighty'}); or gettext.format("Gimme a {0}, a {1} and a {2}", ['ball', 'gun', 'kite']);
- There is the usual gettext plural support. The different plural forms are given as a javascript function (we practically have this, because we generate a php function, which does the same thing)
No more words, here is some code:
// the key for plural forms is singular\0plural (like in the mo file)
var trans = {
baba: 'dyado',
'{0} baba\0{0} babas': ['{0} dyado', '{0} dyados']
};
var l10n = new gettext(trans);
alert(l10n.gettext("baba"));
alert(gettext.format(l10n.ngettext("{0} baba", "{0} babas", 1), [1]);
alert(gettext.format(l10n.ngettext("{0} baba", "{0} babas", 5), [5]);
Eventually, if you have reached this point and you are not totally bored, you can see the code:
- The attached archive is a current (rev23) snapshot of the repository at: http://ncb.googlecode.com/svn/js/gettext/
- In the app sub-folder there is a proof-of-concept simple i18n-ed application, which is ready for execution, just open app.php in your browser
- You can find some junit unit tests in test.html
What do you think?
